1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a navigation method, medium, and system, and more particularly, to a navigation method, medium, and system capable of providing information regarding an optimal traveling route and effectively transmitting the information.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of GPS (global positioning systems), and like positioning techniques, navigation services providing information on the positions of persons or objects and information on traveling routes have drawn attention. Such navigation systems receive destination information from a user, determine the optimal route from a current user position to a destination, and provide the determined optimal route to the user. These navigation systems determine the optimal route based on traffic information obtained or known at the start point of the user's travel.
However, when the start point to destination route guidance is performed based on the traffic information obtained or known at the start point, it is difficult to obtain real-time traffic information after the starting time. In addition, it is difficult to appropriately reflect real-time traffic conditions because traffic conditions can change while the user or vehicle is traveling. Here, such real-time traffic information could include information on accidents and weather, or other traffic increasing/decreasing occurrences, for example.
In order to overcome such drawbacks, techniques have been proposed for receiving updated traffic information from a navigation server in real time and determining the route of the vehicle based on the received traffic information.
However, even though such real-time traffic information may be received from a navigation server, the traffic information used to determine the route of the vehicle may be unavailable during the travel of the route before the user reaches the destination. For example, when the vehicle encounters traffic congestion at a point A of a first route, conventional navigation system select a second route capable of avoiding traffic congestion and provide the second route to the user. However, for example, even though traffic congestion occurs at point A, the traffic congestion may be reduced before the vehicle actually reaches point A. In this case, the second route provided to the user may actually not be the optimal route.
In addition, when the navigation system periodically receives such updated information from the navigation server, the overall amount of data transmitted therebetween increases.